1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a skew detecting apparatus for detecting the transfer state of a medium such as a magnetic card, and more particularly to a skew detecting apparatus, a medium processing apparatus, a magnetic card processing apparatus and a card processing system for precisely detecting a skew displacement of the medium to be transferred to prevent occurrence of an abnormal medium.
2. Description of the Related Art
In a card processing apparatus such as a magnetic card processing apparatus, generally, a magnetic card is guided to a card transfer path, further guided to a contact position with a magnetic head arranged on the card transfer path and the magnetic reached the contact is subjected to read and write of magnetic information.
In order to implement such processing of the magnetic card, the transfer speed of the magnetic card must be kept constant, and the slight skew of the magnetic card formed with a transfer direction must be suppressed within a prescribed angle.
The recording angle of the magnetic data is defined in the ISO standard of the magnetic card. Therefore, under the present circumstances, as shown in FIG. 5, the magnetic processing apparatus is provided with a card width-justification mechanism 54 which guides a magnetic card 51 toward a reference plane 52 under pressure using a width justification plate 53.
However, even with the provision of such a card width-justification mechanism, while the data of the magnetic card are processed, the skew degree of the magnetic card influenced by chattering vibration during its transfer cannot be known. Therefore, where the magnetic card processing apparatus is manufactured, after write for the magnetic card has been made, the skew of the magnetic data must be confirmed by a microscope to verify the performance thereof precisely.
While the width-justification mechanism operates after the verification, it cannot be known whether or not it is operating properly and the skew of the magnetic card is within a normal region. Therefore, even when its incompatibility with the ISO standard, write error and read error occur, it cannot be known whether or not these inconveniences are due to the skew of the magnetic card. The subsequent analysis of error cannot be easily made.
It is an object of the present invention to provide a skew detecting apparatus, a medium processing apparatus, a magnetic card processing apparatus and a card processing system for precisely detecting a skew displacement of the medium to be transferred to prevent occurrence of an abnormal medium which can capture the skew of a medium precisely during medium transfer by detecting not only the shift in a transfer direction of the medium but also that in its width direction, thereby preventing occurrence of an abnormal medium.
According to a first aspect of the present invention, a skew detecting apparatus comprises: a spherical roller rolling in contact with the surface of a medium guided on a medium transfer path; and skew detecting means for acquiring a skew displacement of the medium which is transferred on the basis of a degree of rolling detected in both medium transfer direction and medium transfer-width direction.
According to a second aspect of the present invention, a medium processing apparatus for processing recording information of a recording medium guided on a medium transfer path, comprises: a spherical roller rolling in contact with the surface of the medium guided on the medium transfer path; rolling degree detecting means for detecting the degree of rolling of the spherical roller in both medium transfer direction and medium transfer-width direction; and skew detecting means for acquiring a skew displacement of the medium which is transferred on the basis of the degree of rolling detected by the rolling degree detecting means.
According to a third aspect of the present invention, a magnetic card processing apparatus provided with a magnetic head for data-processing a magnetic card guided to a card transfer path, comprises: a spherical roller rolling in contact with the surface of a medium guided on the medium transfer path; and rolling degree detecting means for detecting the degree of rolling of the spherical roller in both medium transfer direction and medium transfer-width direction; and skew detecting means for acquiring a skew displacement of the medium which is transferred on the basis of the degree of rolling detected by the rolling degree detecting means.
According to a fourth aspect of the present invention, in the magnetic card processing apparatus of the third aspect, the spherical roller is arranged at a position in a card transfer-width direction corresponding to the position of the magnetic head arranged on the card transfer path.
According to a fifth aspect of the present invention, in the skew detecting apparatus of the first aspect, the medium processing apparatus of the second aspect and the magnetic card processing apparatus of the third aspect, the skew detecting means includes means for alerting a host system to occurrence of an error when it detects that the skew exceeds a limit of the skew displacement.
According to a sixth aspect of the present invention, in the card processing system comprises the magnetic card processing system according to claim 3 and a host system for processing magnetic data of the magnetic card.
In accordance with the present invention, when the skew of a medium to be transferred is detected, a spherical roller in contact with the surface of the medium to be transferred on a medium transfer path is rolled and the skew detecting means acquires a skew displacement of the medium which is transferred on the basis of a degree of rolling of the spherical roller detected in both medium transfer and medium transfer-width direction.
Thus, on the way of the transfer of the medium, the skew of the medium can be detected accurately. Therefore, it can be surely known whether or not abnormality occurs in the medium on the basis of the skew detected data.
In case of using the medium processing apparatus for processing the recorded information of a recording medium guided onto the medium transfer path, the spherical roller rolls are kept in contact with the surface of the magnetic card transferred on the card transfer path. The rolling degree of the rolling spherical roller in both medium transfer direction and medium transfer-width direction is detected by the rolling degree detecting means, and the skew detecting means can acquire the skew displacement of the recording medium on the basis of the detected rolling degree.
In case that a magnetic card is applied to a medium which is an object for skew detection in such a skew detecting apparatus or to a recording medium which is an object for processing in the medium processing apparatus, the degree of skew of the magnetic card can be detected. Therefore, when the skewed transfer which is not suitable to the processing of the magnetic data is executed, the magnetic processing for the magnetic card is attempted again. Thus, the data processing capability of the magnetic data can be improved.
Further, if the skew detecting means is arranged at a position in a card transfer-width direction corresponding to the position of the magnetic head, the processing state of magnetic data can be detected precisely at that position.
Therefore, when the magnetic card processing apparatus is manufactured, it is: not necessary to test the magnetic card having been actually subjected to the magnetic processing for write to verify the performance of the card justifying mechanism.
Further, also when the magnetic card processing apparatus operates after the verification, whether or not the skew when the card is transferred is proper can be detected accurately. Therefore, it is possible to determine whether or not the card width justifying mechanism operates properly. If occurrence of the magnetic error is prevented, reliability of the magnetic card processing apparatus is improved. Further, by constructing a card processing system which alerts a host system to the contents of the error when it has occurred, the maintenance/management of the magnetic card processing apparatus can be easily carried out.